‘My asymptotes,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘Hyperbolic.’
We don’t know an awful lot about the asymptotes,’ said Dr Pink. ‘They’ll certainly bear watching. A Shackleton-Planck Series wouldn’t be amiss, I think.’ Fleshky, Potluck and Krishna raised their eyebrows. ‘We’ll just put you on 2-Nup for the time being, damp the diapason a bit. We’ll know more in a few days.’
‘I seem to be getting in deeper,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘When I came here it was just the hypotenuse and the diapason. Now it’s the asymptotes as well.’
‘My dear boy,’ said Dr Pink, ‘these things aren’t up to us, you know. We have to take what comes and cope the best we can. At least you’re not showing any quanta so far, which is a bit of luck, I can tell you. Whether an asymptoctomy’s on the cards remains to be seen, but it’s nothing very much if it comes to that. We can have them out in no time at all, and you’ll be up and around in four or five days.’
‘But I was up and around before we started this whole thing,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘You said you were just going to run a few tests.’ He was alone, he realized. Everyone had left some time ago. The curtains had been pushed back.
‘Goes,’ said Schwarzgang from among his tubes, pumps, filters and condensers.
‘Yes,’ said Kleinzeit, ‘that is how it goes.’ He was suddenly worried about Schwarzgang. He hadn’t even noticed when Dr Pink had stopped at the old man’s bed, hadn’t heard a word said to or about him. ‘You all right?’ he said.
‘Be expected,’ said Schwarzgang. His blips seemed no slower than before and just as steady. All the machinery seemed to be working properly.
‘Good,’ said Kleinzeit. He checked all the connections of Schwarzgang’s machinery, made sure the monitor was plugged in firmly.
The day sister appeared again. ‘You’re to have three of these twice a day,’ she said.
‘Right,’ said Kleinzeit, swallowed his 2-Nup.
‘And stay in bed,’ said the sister. ‘No more excursions.’
‘Right,’ said Kleinzeit, took his clothes to the bathroom, put them on, and disappeared via the fire exit.
Seven Fruity Buns
Kleinzeit went into the Underground, took a train, got off at one of the stations he liked, walked about in the corridors. An old man was playing a recorder. Kleinzeit didn’t like his manner, gave him 5p anyway. He walked among the walls and footsteps, sometimes looking at people, sometimes not.
He saw ahead of him the red-bearded man he had once dreamed about. He saw him drop a sheet of yellow paper, saw him drop another, followed him into a train, followed him out into another station, kept following him into and out of trains and corridors, saw the red-bearded man begin the return journey, pick up a sheet of yellow paper, write something on it and drop it again.
Kleinzeit picked up the paper, read:
Morrows cruel mock.
He put the paper in his pocket, hurried to catch up with the red-bearded man.
‘Excuse me,’ he said.
Redbeard looked at him, kept on walking. ‘You’re excused,’ he said. His accent was foreign. Kleinzeit remembered that in the dream his accent had been the same.
‘I dreamed about you,’ said Kleinzeit.
‘There’s no charge for that,’ said Redbeard.
‘There’s more to be said.’
‘Not by me.’ Redbeard turned away.
‘By me, then,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘Can I buy you a coffee?’
‘If you’ve got the money you can buy one. I don’t say I’ll drink it.’
’Will you drink it?’
‘I like fruity buns,’ said Redbeard.
‘With fruity buns then.’
‘Right.’
They went into a coffee shop selected by Redbeard. Kleinzeit bought four fruity buns.
‘Aren’t you having fruity buns too?’ said Redbeard.
Kleinzeit bought a fifth fruity bun and two coffees. They sat down at a table by the window. Redbeard put his bedroll and carrier-bags in the corner behind his chair. Both stared into the street while drinking coffee and eating fruity buns. Kleinzeit offered a cigarette. They lit up, inhaled deeply, blew out smoke, sighed.
‘I dreamed about you,’ said Kleinzeit again.
‘As I said before, no charge,’ said Redbeard.
‘There’s no use beating about the bush,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘What’s all this with the yellow paper?’
‘You police?’
‘No.’
‘Bloody cheek then.’ Redbeard stared hard at Kleinzeit. His eyes were bright blue, intransigent like a doll’s eyes. Kleinzeit thought of a doll’s head lying on a beach, elemental like the sea, like the sky.
‘I picked up a sheet of yellow paper a couple of weeks ago,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘On it I wrote a man with a barrow full of rocks.’
‘Harrow full of crocks,’ said Redbeard without looking away.
‘“Morrows cruel mock,”’ said Kleinzeit. ‘What’s it mean?’.
Redbeard turned, stared out of the window.
‘Well?’
Redbeard shook his head.
‘You show up in my head,’ said Kleinzeit, ‘and you say, “Don’t come the innocent with me, mate.” ‘
Redbeard shook his head.
‘Well?’ said Kleinzeit.
‘If I dream you that’s my affair,’ said Redbeard. ‘If you dream me that’s your affair.’
‘Look here,’ said Kleinzeit, ‘don’t you come the innocent with me. You and your flaming pretensions.’
‘What do you mean, “pretensions”?’
‘Well, what else is it, I’d like to know,’ said Kleinzeit, ‘when you go about dropping yellow paper so that barrows full of rocks come out of my typewriter and I get sacked.’
‘Harrow full of crocks,’ said Redbeard. ‘You keep on interfering with me and I may yet have to sort you out.’
‘I interfere with you!’ said Kleinzeit. ‘Flashpoint’s dying words were “Arrow in a box”. I bought my glockenspiel at YARROW, Fullest Stock. There was never anything of that sort before your yellow paper.’ He gave Redbeard a cigarette, lit it for him, lit one for himself. Both smoked, stared out of the window.
Redbeard showed Kleinzeit his empty cup. Kleinzeit bought two more coffees and two more fruity buns. ‘Fruity buns, for that matter!’ he said. ‘The fat man ate fruity buns. What’re you, another ullage case?’
Redbeard stared at him while he ate the buns. ‘You!’ he said when he had finished chewing. ‘You’re no better than a little sucking baby. You bloody want answers to everything, everything explained, meanings and whatnot all laid on for you. What’s it to me what the yellow paper does to you? Do you care what it does to me? Of course you don’t. Why should you?’
Kleinzeit had no answer.
‘Right,’ said Redbeard. ‘There’s nothing to say. We’re all alone, those of us who are alone. Why do they have to lie about it?’
‘Who? About what?’
‘Newspapers and magazines. About how it is. Harry Solvent, for instance.’
‘The one who wrote Kill for a Living?’
‘Right,’ said Redbeard. ‘In the Sunday Times Magazine you see photos of him in his Robert Adam mansion.’
‘Pompwood.’
‘Right. There he is in the photos having a bath in a tub which is one of Tiepolo’s smaller chapel domes inverted, it’s about twenty feet across. The frescoes have been coated with perspex to make it waterproof. The drain plug, carved of pink coral, is fitted into Venus’s right nipple. The dome is set in a base of Parian marble blocks weighing twelve tons, from a temple of Apollo at Lesbos.’